Save Our Hospitals is a resident-led campaign group formed in July 2012. We are FIGHTING against the NHS plans to DEMOLISH Charing Cross Hospital and downgrading of our A&Es( Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Ealing and Central Middlesex Hospitals)

Monday, 30 May 2016

Yet again the NHS is being subjected to a drastic top-down reorganisation, this time without parliamentary approval, local consultation or media scrutiny. The NHS is being carved up, behind our backs, into 44 ‘footprints’ across England. By the end of June this year, each ‘footprint’ is required to submit a Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) to NHS England. What these plans are about are more cuts and more privatisation.

The footprint for NW London covers the 8 boroughs which formed 'Shaping a Healthier Future'. It is clear that SaHF is the basis for local proposals – but they are worse than anything we have seen up to now. As the Evening Standard discovered, what is planned for our part of London is at least the loss of 500 acute hospital beds – far more than in the original SaHF.

But these plans are all about austerity – not about improving health services for all of us. A key element of the STPs is that the NHS is to save £22bn by 2020 – rather more than the measly £8bn extra funding promised! And each ‘footprint’ has to meet impossible targets to get any of the ‘extra’ funding. The only way this can be done is by closing hospitals, closing A&Es, sacking staff, rationing treatment and, possibly at a later time, charging for some services.

While the government seems determined to slash spending on our NHS, we know that the actual percentage of GDP spent on health in the UK is to be cut. Currently this is 8.5% with plans to reduce this to 6.8% by 2020. This compares with France’s 10.9%, Germany’s 11.0% and the Netherlands' 11.1% - and even more starkly with the more than 16% in the United States (figures from the Kings Fund, Jan 2016)

Save Our Hospitals is committed to working with other campaigners to oppose these plans, just as we have opposed SaHF over the past 4 years. We are also demanding that there is full consultation before STPs are introduced.

A&E WAITING TIMES CONTINUE TO DETERIORATE

While NHS bureaucrats continue to pretend that it's possible to close 500 acute hospital beds (including 300 at Charing Cross) in NW London with no ill effects, evidence that this is dangerous mounts. We were told that the closures of Hammersmith & Central Middlesex A&E departments last year would not overload A&Es at Charing Cross and St Mary's. In fact there has been a notable deterioration in waiting times at both hospitals, and at Northwick Park, and in March 2016 A&E waiting times at Charing Cross and St Mary’s were amongst theworst in England - with more than 30% of the sickest people waiting more than 4 hours to be treated.

NOT SAFE – NOT FAIR

We await the details of the proposed agreement on the junior doctors’ contract – these have not yet been fully published. The result of the doctors’ ballot will not be known until early July. Whatever the outcome, junior doctors have fought a magnificent battle both for their own work conditions and for all NHS staff. Central to their fight is the evidence that the imposed contract was not fair to doctors and not safe for patients. Those of us on the picket lines with the junior doctors were not surprised at the overwhelming support of the public on each of the strike days.

BURSARY OR BUST As Unite the Union has pointed out: ‘The Tories plan to cut student nurses' bursaries and replace them with loans. After August 2017 nursing courses will be fee paying, leaving students with more than £50,000 of debt if they undertake a three year degree course. Saddling students with a lifetime of debt – which most of them will never be able to pay off – will massively deter those wanting to enter nursing and the other health professions covered by the bursary. It will affect people studying a range of professions including nursing, speech and language therapy, radiology, occupational therapy, mental health nursing and midwifery.’

SOH AGM Wednesday 8th June 7.30pm at Hammersmith Town Hall (probably Committee Room 4). We are hoping to have a junior doctor with us. ALL WELCOME.

STALLS We hold a regular stall in the Borough when we distribute information, collect signatures on petitions and listen to what local people have to say about our health services. PLEASE COME AND JOIN US AT ONE OF OUR STALLS – EXTRA HELP ALWAYS WELCOME AND WE DO LIKE TO MEET OUR SUPPORTERS

Plans to remove hundreds of beds from local hospitals have been slammed as ‘dangerous’ by Hammersmith & Fulham Council Leader, Cllr Stephen Cowan.

The proposals to cut 500 acute beds across H&F and neighbouring boroughs were published last week by North West London NHS as part of their ‘transformation plans’. These plans have already been heavily criticised and were labelled ‘deeply flawed’ in Michael Mansfield QC’s landmark Independent Healthcare Commission report published last year.

The announcement has re-ignited concerns that a beds and funding crisis is threatening to hit local NHS services.

“The plans to consider cutting 500 hospital beds are frankly dangerous. And we will continue to fight to protect our health service at every level,” said Cllr Cowan.

“It is further proof that the credibility of the entire North West London Transformation plan, including proposals to axe blue-light services at Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, is now in tatters.

“Local health bosses should be under no illusion that their most recent scheme will only serve to galvanise those dedicated campaigners who have fought so hard to protect local NHS services, such as those at Charing Cross.”

These proposals were revealed by the local NHS in Ealing, which recommend the closure of 500 acute beds in order to avert a £1billion overspend in health and social care over the next five years, as part of its NW London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP).

The STP includes the Shaping a Healthier Future (SaHF) programme, which has already seen blue-light services axed at Hammersmith Hospital – with Charing Cross next in line for the axe as bosses move to sell off most of the site.

“Local health bosses should be under no illusion that their most recent scheme will only serve to galvanise those dedicated campaigners who have fought so hard to protect local NHS services, such as those at Charing Cross.”

The proposals to cut 500 acute beds across H&F and neighbouring boroughs were published by North West London They were revealed by the local NHS in Ealing, which recommend the closure of the beds in order to avert the overspend in health and social care over the next five years, as part of its STP.

It took an article in the 10 May 2016 issue of the ‘Evening Standard’ to inform us all about the projected butchering of our local hospitals. The so called debt of £1 billion in NHS NW London is apparently to be dealt with by axing 500 Acute beds in our local hospitals by 2020. The beds to be lost would have been for use by the physically ill and the mentally ill.

The trio who told the newspaper are the bosses of the NHS Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group, Brent Council and the NHS Imperial Healthcare Trust.

Digging deeper into this bombshell we find that the figures came from the draft 2016/2017 NHS NW London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP). This draft STP has been hatched in secret by representatives of 31 public bodies which include eight NHS CCGs, eight Local Authorities and all the NW London NHS Trusts. The failing 2012 cost cutting ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ (SaHF) programme does not get any mention whatsoever. Obviously SaHF as a cost cutting vehicle has now been replaced by STP.

The body which created this STP calls itself the NWL Strategic Planning Group (SPG). The SPG has no statutory authority and is not the creation of any Act of Parliament. No public consultation was carried out on the STP or the SPG. I can’t find any evidence of SPG meeting minutes or the draft STP. You might have thought that these documents might exist on the Ealing CCG web site, the Ealing Council website or the web site of the ‘North West London Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups’. But you would be wrong.

Of course the ‘Evening Standard’ quotes some anonymous NHS spokesperson shoveling out the usual claptrap about not axing beds before alternative services are in place. Well this never happened when Acute beds were axed from Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals in September 2014. And I don’t expect it will happen with the new ‘Axe 500 beds’ project.